Great Marvel

The Great Marvel series used several different cover and jacket designs. Unlike many other series, the cover designs usually matched the plots of each volume.

The Great Marvel series.

This Stratemeyer Syndicate series began in 1906 with the other Cupples & Leon offerings of that year. It was intended to be a series of Jules Verne-like stories for young readers.

Howard R. Garis was the ghostwriter for many of the 9 volumes in the series.

Unlike most Cupples & Leon books, several cover designs were used to be stamped on the covers. Most were fairly well connected with the vehicle in the story.

A few titles were reprinted in the 1930s by Whitman, including the copy of Lost on the Moon with the colorful jacket.

Thomas M. Mitchell sent in an unsolicited 10th volume of the series, “Marooned on Mercury.” The Syndicated liked it well enough to try to convince either Cupples & Leon or Whitman to publish it. However, the series had pretty much run its course by then and it was not published. They did have him write the two Whitman Better Little Books for the Tom Swift series in 1939 and 1941, however.

The second volume, Under the Ocean to the South Pole, has a submarine story much like Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870, 1872). There are even underwater rifles like Verne describes. These are the functional inspiration for the TASER even though the name comes from “Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle.”

Although some websites attach The Wizard of the Sea (Mershon, 1900) to this series, it is not part of it.

1. Through the Air to the North Pole (1906)2. Under the Ocean to the South Pole (1907)3. Five Thousand Miles Underground (1908)4. Through Space to Mars (1910)5. Lost on the Moon (1911)6. On a Torn-Away World (1913)7. The City Beyond the Clouds (1925)8. By Air Express to Venus (1929)9. By Space Ship to Saturn (1935)

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Copyright: James D. Keeline, 2000-2015. All Rights Reserved.
Any existing copyrights of series books not yet under public domain and any remaining trademarks belong to their respective holders, particularly Simon & Schuster who purchased the Syndicate in 1985.